Saint-Gobain faces pressure over water contamination in N.Y., N.H.

Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics is facing renewed pressure over pollution from fluorinated chemicals around its factories, with environmental regulators in New York now pushing the company to help pay for a multimillion-dollar upgrade of one town's drinking water system.

New York's Department of Environmental Conservation unveiled a plan Dec. 3 to have both Saint-Gobain and Honeywell International support a $9.7 million plan for a new drinking water system in the town of Hoosick Falls.

Meanwhile, nearby in New Hampshire, a group of state and local lawmakers held a news conference Nov. 29 to press that state's environmental agency to shut down or curtail operations at another Saint-Gobain factory, in the city of Merrimack.

Those lawmakers cited concerns about residential drinking water supplies getting contaminated by so-called "forever" fluorinated chemicals leaking from the Merrimack factory, echoing worries in Hoosick Falls.

In New York, the state DEC released a long-awaited plan Dec. 3 that called for using New York's Superfund law to have Saint-Gobain and Honeywell "implement" the $9.7 million DEC plan to provide Hoosick Falls with new sources of drinking water.

"Today's announcement is a significant milestone in our multi-year efforts to provide a permanent and clean water supply to the people of Hoosick Falls," said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos, in a statement.

"In addition to the implementation of the new, clean drinking water supply, DEC continues to require Honeywell and Saint-Gobain to identify and address the sources of PFOA contamination in this community," the DEC said.

The DEC plan would create new production wells away from aquifers it says have been contaminated by historical releases of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in companies' manufacturing operations, and then build a new water line to connect to the town's treatment plant.

State officials said the companies have 60 days to tell DEC if they will implement the plan.

Saint-Gobain did not respond to a request for comment but the company has previously told New York lawmakers that it's fully committed to providing Hoosick Falls with drinking water that exceeds PFOA safety standards and it has maintained a website to discuss its efforts.

It said, for example, that PFOA dropped to non-detectable levels in the water system in early 2016 after it installed a filter system.

The DEC report said the Saint-Gobain plant makes sheets of polytetrafluoroethylene resin and said the facility has been making PTFE products under various owners since the early 1960s. Allied Signal, which is now part of Honeywell, owned the plant before Saint-Gobain.

After PFOA contamination was discovered in groundwater in Hoosick Falls in 2016, Saint-Gobain and Honeywell paid to install a granular activated carbon filter on the town's drinking water plant to remove PFOA and other PFAS chemicals.

As part of the ongoing environmental review of fluorinated chemicals in the town's water supply, New York state officials, the companies and local groups agreed to locate new sources of drinking water, an effort which led to the Dec. 3 announcement from the DEC.

But some argue that the DEC should have opted to pull its drinking water from further away.

Judith Enck, who led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regional office overseeing New York during President Barack Obama's administration, said the state should instead have chosen another option in its Dec. 3 report—a surface water reservoir owned by the city of Troy.

"The better option is a surface water reservoir, [because] groundwater in the area is contaminated with PFAS chemicals," said Judith Enck, who is also president of the group Beyond Plastics. "The polluters did not want to pay to build a long water pipeline."

"These are forever chemicals," she said.

The DEC report said the reservoir option would cost at least $36 million.

Hoosick Falls Mayor Rob Allen, however, said on social media that local officials wanted a local water source.

In a direct response to Enck's comments, he wrote on Twitter that because of the Superfund process, state officials had the authority to make the final decision about water sources.

"Our preference was the local groundwater source," he said. "Both sources were good and viable; both had risk."

The DEC statement quoted the Hoosick Area Community Participation Working Group as saying that the DEC decision "reflects community priorities."

"The water crisis has been one of the largest challenges our community has ever faced, and to see a resolution and rectification on the horizon brings great relief to all," said Brian Bushner, co-chair of the group.

The $9.7 million New York drinking water plan comes five months after Saint-Gobain and other companies reached a $65 million settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by local residents.

That July settlement said the companies agreed to compensate Hoosick Falls area residents for both health claims and lost property value stemming from PFOA contamination between 1996 and 2016.

The PFOA groundwater issues around the Hoosick Falls plant came to light in part because of residents researching cancer deaths in the area and looking at what chemicals were being emitted from factories.

In New Hampshire, Saint Gobain faces additional pressure over PFOA and groundwater contamination.

On Nov. 29, according to press reports, a group of current and former state lawmakers and town officials held a virtual news conference to call on the state's Department of Environmental Services to close a Saint-Gobain plant in Merrimack, N.H., or put tougher restrictions on the factory.

The group expressed concerns that the factory's PFOA retrofit plans included a system to bypass emissions controls and noted that state regulators had issued the company a "letter of deficiency" earlier in the month over it.

State representative Bill Boyd, R-Merrimack, told New Hampshire TV station WMUR in a separate interview that he had trouble trusting the company.

"I have a level of distrust that leaves me unconfident in their ability to follow through with what they're saying they're going to follow through on," said Boyd, who was one of several lawmakers at the press conference.

Saint-Gobain did not respond to an email requesting comment but WMUR said the company provided it with a statement, saying that recent testing showed Saint-Gobain emissions were well below permitted levels and calling the concerns from lawmakers inaccurate.

"We have a right to lawfully operate our business in the state of New Hampshire," Saint-Gobain said. "These claims are based on inaccurate and misleading statements related to the emergency bypass, which is a critical safety component and has been part of our public documentation since before construction began."

"We are greatly disappointed by the misleading rhetoric by some local politicians this week," it said.

PFOA and related chemicals are the subject of intense scrutiny in Washington for their widespread presence in the environment and in products such as non-stick cookware, coatings on packaging, carpets and firefighting foams.

The Environmental Protection Agency last month released a draft scientific review that said PFOA and PFOS are hazardous to human health at "much lower levels of exposure" than previously understood and that PFOA is a "likely carcinogen."

EPA, which plans to release draft national drinking water standards for PFAS chemicals in 2022, said the infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden on Nov. 15 includes $10 billion to clean up PFAS and other emerging contaminants in water supplies.

In 2019, Saint-Gobain agreed to pay for part of a $40 million plan from Vermont state officials to address PFOA contamination around one of its factories in North Bennington.